Display systems can display video and graphics from a variety of data sources (e.g. analog or digital cameras), some of which continuously send network data or IP streams. The variety of incoming streams may be combined and displayed on multiple windows on a single display device (e.g. LCD monitor). Multiple windows may be displayed on multiple display devices. A single window can also be split across multiple display devices.
The traditional way display systems process incoming video streams can comprise of three processing routines on a host device. A first processing routine captures and parses network incoming streams, a second processing routine decodes the network data and a third processing routine renders incoming streams from the variety of data sources. The host device can be, for example, a PC or another display system.
Alternatively, this processing can be done externally to the host and once rendered, the streams are sent to the host device. In this case, the number of incoming streams is limited due to bandwidth consumption during data exchanges between a remote processor and the host device. When transmitting a fully rendered image, the size and resolution of the image will limit the number of streams that can be sent to a display device. Additionally, the processor on the host device limits the number of streams that can be displayed on a display system. Therefore, there is a need to address these issues to provide bandwidth availability and processing performance for a large amount of incoming video streams.